WELCOME ADDRESS FROM THE CONGRESS CHAIRS

Dear Members,Dear Colleagues,Dear Friends,

It is our great pleasure and honor to invite you to particpate in the 5th International Congress of the iLDLT Group that will take place in Brussels on Friday October 15 and Saturday 16, 2021.

This event will be organised in collaboration with the Belgian Section of Hepato-Bilo-Pancreatic Surgery (BSHBPS) of the Royal Belgian Society for Surgery (RBSS). Indeed the XXIst annual, Postgraduate Course of the BHBPS has been officially integrated in the iLDLT Congress.

The biennial iLDLT meeting follows the very successful previous ones, which took place twice in Seoul (SKr) and once in Dallas(US) and Kaohsiung (Tw). As the Western world still hesitates to embrace this therapeutic modality, the iLDLTG council found it opportune to “export” the congress to Europe.

The program focuses on the spectacular technical advances that have been made during the last two decades in this field of transplantation as well as on the cross-fertilization between living donor liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery. A holistic HPB surgeon should entail on both a wider view about oncologic indications and on technical considerations for safe but advanced liver surgery. The sessions dedicated to hepatobiliary oncology (eg. which patient to resect, which one to transplant) and to advanced liver surgery (eg. in vivo and ex-vivo liver surgery) and modern surgical technology (eg. laparoscopic and robotic liver surgery) clearly illustrate this idea.

The congress aims at capturing the interest of both transplant and non-transplant communities in order to foster progress in the treatment of benign and malignant hepatobiliary diseases. These progresses are based on “versatility”, the key to be successful in complex surgical procedures and
decision making processes !

During this two day meeting, many of the world’s most renowned Western and Eastern leaders in the fields of liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery will raise the interest for, and the scientific content of this meeting. An occasion not to miss!
The iLDLTG Council and the board of the BSHBPS hope to welcome you in October 2021 in Brussels, ”the heart of Europe”.

Mark your calendar NOW … and kindly stimulate your surgical colleagues not only to attend, but also to actively participate in the meeting.

Very sincerely yours,

Prof.em .Jan LERUT
Congress Chair
Past-President iLDLTG

Dr.Alexandra DILI
Congress Co-Chair
President BSHBPS-RBSS

Prof. Chao-Long CHEN
President ILDLTG